Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  “We lack information for the Archipelago,” Two said. “That is a constant. But with what we know now, an expedition would be feasible. The risk behind would be less than that of delaying to meet the risk in front.”

  “How much less—!” Therkon stopped himself in mid-breath. “Oh, my lady, forgive me again. I have my answer. It’s enough. More than enough.”

  “How much less,” Two said precisely, “we cannot more exactly calculate, till we see Dhasdein.”

  “Oh—!” The smile came then, genuine, wondering, devastating. The grateful emperor. The marveling philosopher.

  Gravely, but without hesitation, he reached out and took up my right hand. Neither of us wondered that Two never thought to spark.

  “Lady Chaeris, you already have my lasting gratitude.” He bent his head and drew my hand higher to set a kiss, light, exquisitely graceful, on its back. “Tell me now, is there anything you wish? Any small recompense I can make?”

  He was smiling across our fingers. The crown prince, the House-head, who had used his tool and found its worth high, and given me courteous gratitude. The philosopher who had watched Two in action, this time for himself.

  The man, I wanted to think, who might also have the tiniest scrap of affection for me.

  As for recompense: I swallowed Two’s most unedifying suggestions and ordered, Shut up. I don’t understand the half of that, and you shan’t make me blush!

  “Well. When we come to Assuana. If we don’t stop, can we at least slow down?”

  He burst out laughing, that spontaneous deep but soft spurt of amusement I had heard among the rocks. “For you, my lady, we will lie over for the night. And if you wish to go into the market next morning, right into the market, not simply the piers, there will be an escort, yes.” The sparkle suddenly sharpened. “Would you wish to go further? Perhaps, to meet Nathyx?”

  “No, no, please.” What if Nathyx wanted questions answered too? “I know about him. At least, enough.” I could have done with more, given Keshaq and Tanekhet’s occasional remarks, but not at that risk.

  “No?” Therkon cocked his head. For a moment it was the dark, beautiful deer again, now stepping freely into some sunlit space. “Something else?”

  Two responded, and my breath stopped. But they were puzzles we had never been able to solve. And Therkon, of all people, must know.

  “Will you,” I took my courage in both hands, “answer two questions for me?”

  The flicker of ruler’s wariness was hardly there before it had gone. “I would hardly have the right to refuse,” a little smile that took the sting out, “were I so inclined.” He turned out his ringless hand, leaning sidelong on the rail now: Ask.

  I drew a deep breath and said, “Why does Keshaq—look so much like you?”

  * * * *

  For an instant I was facing not merely the emperor, but the imperial hatchet man. Then that graven menace softened. The crown prince rubbed a finger once between his eyebrows and answered soberly, almost reluctantly, “Because—Keshaq—is high Quetzistani blood.”

  Two assayed all possible implications in a flash and gained nothing. He read that, and rubbed his brows again.

  “And the Empress. She is Quetzistani.”

  High Quetzistani, it went without saying. Full Quetzistani, I realized. So her looks must have been handed on. So he looked like Keshaq, or Keshaq looked like him, because—

  “We are not kin.” Now the gravity was deepening to sombreness. “The Empress’ clan is the Jhuir. Since—before her marriage—they have led Quetzistan.”

  Even at twelve I knew enough about people to let him go on in his own time.

  He looked down the River, and said the rest to the verdantly springing crops of Verrain.

  “Do you know what it means? Keshaq?”

  “Thirsty,” Two said.

  “Thirsty, yes. And so, also, Unappeased.”

  I bit my tongue on Two’s, Unappeased for what?

  “His clan,” said Therkon, still to the Riverside, “was Ku*o. Once, they led Quetzistan. Before—the Empress wed.”

  Not, ‘my mother.’ The Empress. Implications, correlations, related information were flying past Two and me now like a stream of lightning sparks. Old Amberlight intelligence of a change of rule in Quetzistan, a clan coup, more than clan work, intervention, help, provocation from Dhasdein, an upheaval, a bloodbath, and the suspicions of past Trouble-heads, firm however unproven, of the instigator.

  I put out both hands and grasped the rail myself. The River seemed to heave and shudder ahead of me. Faintly, I heard myself say, “Tanekhet?”

  Therkon very nearly jumped. I did hear his smothered gasp. Then the deliberate steadiness with which he answered, “He engineered the, the rising, yes. For the emperor’s marriage. To,” the steadiness faltered, “make Dhasdein safe.”

  Replaced the dominant Quetzistani clan, Two’s ruthless recollections filled out, welded its substitute to the Empire. Removed, excised the opposition. Down to its very roots.

  What had that meant to Keshaq? Loss of kinsfolk, more than certainly. And for himself?

  Slavery, Two answered brutally. And would not go on.

  “He,” my throat was dry, “doesn’t forget.”

  Therkon gave a great sigh and turned to lean side by side with me, a sag in his shoulders that had nothing to do with emperors. “No. Keshaq does not forget.”

  No wonder he had brought troublecrew to Iskarda, no wonder they had been all but mutinous when he slid off by himself. “You should never have gone off alone! If he’d known—if you’d met—!”

  Therkon dropped his head and said to the rail, “I am safe. However he and Tanekhet ‘arranged’ it. He has forsworn revenge.”

  I waited. He said it bitterly, to the River beneath us. “But like him, I cannot forget.”

  That their blood was kind if not actual kin, and Keshaq’s once as high as Therkon’s own would be, in Quetzistan. That their matched heritage spoke in their faces, and he could have met Keshaq’s fate. And Keshaq’s amnesty, like his own blood-guilt, Therkon could not forget.

  “It wasn’t your fault!”

  He lifted his head and attempted a smile. “My lady.” More softly, “My partisan. No, it was not my fault. But it is there.”

  “But you like, you liked Tanekhet!”

  This time the head came up in a jerk. Then intimidation yielded to a twisted little smile.

  “My lady. Forgive me again. I forget how much you do know.” Or Two knows, he did not have to supplement. “Yes, I cared for—I still do care for Tanekhet. I was born in Dhasdein. I thought myself Dhasdeini, most of my life. And he, as a boy he was my model. My steering star. I tried to copy everything he did.” The long mouth did twist. “I thought, if I could manage that in small things, I could also manage the way he—ruled the Court.”

  In that second my own heart affirmed that every rumor about the way the old emperor despised his heir had been true. My hand went out before I could help it, and one of us put it over his ringed fingers on the rail.

  “You did manage,” I said.

  His fingers jumped, but he did not pull away. It was I who did that, feeling the blush burn out to my very ears. “I’m sorry. I never meant—”

  To touch him again, uninvited. Without the pretext, let alone the grace, with which he had touched me. To invoke those moments in the rocks when we touched him before.

  He did reach out as he had once in our council room, before Tez’s look warned him off. “My lady, it was I who never should have burdened you with old injustice. Old,” wryly, his brows quirked, “foolishness. Not at all fit for,” I literally saw him reach, for a twelve-year-old girl, and jib. He looked up and smiled at me, however ruefully, without constraint.

  “That is foolish too, is it not? When you already know so much.” Then he moved a shoulder and put
it behind him as firmly as a Head’s gavel coming down. “Tell me, what else did you wish to ask?”

  “Oh.” If the first question resurrected ogres, this might level walls. But he was waiting. To hedge off now would be almost as great a slight as might the question itself.

  “Did Dhasdein,” I looked him full in that dark, arresting eye, “arrange to make my mother leave?”

  “What—?!”

  He caught himself before both troublecrews could leap. Re-arranged his body, made every muscle signal, False alarm. Smiled at me, as glassily false as the posture, with the hatchet man’s glitter in his eye. “My lady, what do you mean?”

  I faced the River in my turn. “They thought, in Iskarda, when your message about the embassy came. That it was so soon after my mother went. That it was so . . . convenient.” I knew he would fill in the sense as fast as Iatha herself. “Iatha said: was it more than good intelligence? Did you—Dhasdein—not just know she’d gone? Did—was it—arranged?”

  And the other echo sprang back to me, Two’s own answer about our meeting in the rocks. I nearly banged the rail myself and cursed. Blight and blast it, maybe it had been arranged. But not by Dhasdein!

  It was too late. The words were out. I stared at the River where a covey of Verrain sampans had just eluded more than my cursory glance, and waited to meet a Dhasdeini massacre of my own.

  “My lady.”

  He said it through his teeth. The effect is rare but quite unmistakable. The rest came in the emperor’s voice, with all the weight of an emperor’s affront.

  “No.”

  Impossible to doubt, as futile to seek more. Beyond forgiveness to apologise. I said it to the deck, in the smallest voice I had achieved since toddler-hood. “Thank you.”

  I heard him gasp. Splutter as he had in the rocks. Struggle, no doubt, with assorted imperial outrages, and suddenly laugh, the true laugh, smothered almost as fast as the splutter before he wheeled back to the rail and addressed the River, voice still quaking with subterranean wrath and erupting mirth.

  “Not at all.”

  Then his hand touched my elbow as he went on in almost normal tones and loud enough for troublecrew’s hearing, “Does Two remember that town? Now it’s harbour for the whole North district of Verrain.”

  * * * *

  We did stop at Assuana, and I had ample time to explore the market, from its junk-and-jewel-box quays to the length of the main market-place: Therkon’s stomach rebelled at something in the day’s breakfast, and his cook threw a royal tantrum, doubtless fuelled by enforced silence in Iskarda. When the mainmast stopped reverberating, the captains had been reduced to mute compliance. We would lie to till the provisions had been changed for something fit to feed the crown prince, and till the crown prince himself could comfortably travel again.

  “It was nothing to do with Iskarda.” On the stern deck, when we finally got under way, Therkon was almost shamefaced. “Nor your provisions.” He looked down and consciously kept a hand from touching his midriff, above the splendour of a phalanx officer’s palm-wide, bronze-studded, serpent-buckle belt. “Simply my cantankerous, wretched . . .”

  “And that’s not your fault either.”

  I got a flash of direct glance and smile, a sun-glint through the gloom of chagrin and undoubted embarrassment. I might have had time to recall Tanekhet’s warning, but Two had other concerns.

  “Do they know why?”

  Therkon snorted softly. “Do you think no-one has asked?”

  And what would be the point of repeating doubtless stressful examinations, pointless catechisms? Think, I ordered Two in exasperation. Run some inferences, first.

  “No particular food, then?”

  The troublecrew had backed off a little, even Azo and Verrith. The look he gave me was untrammeled surprise. And then, a dawn-glimmer of hope.

  “No particular food, no.”

  And? I demanded of Two in rising irritation. Can’t you see what you’re doing? He thought—he hoped—we could solve it. Produce an oracle. Make a true diagnosis, cure him. And do you have the facts for that?

  “Let me,” said Two, “think about it. At least until Dhasdein.”

  Let me? I did not have time to question or expostulate. The glimmer of hope had become full morning. Crown prince and philosopher said with truest gratitude, “My lady, you are too kind.”

  Remember, I threatened us both when he had disappeared back to the hencoop, Tanekhet’s warning. Be wary, control yourself. Don’t let those instants of devastating open feeling wash your defenses right away.

  * * * *

  It was another two days downRiver before I belatedly thought to ask, “Why didn’t Nathyx want to see me?”

  “Ah.” We were back on the stern deck, in what was becoming routine: Therkon’s mid-morning break from his labours in what, at evening, would become his quarters, his troublecrew’s quarters, and Azo and Verrith’s and my room. The cook had produced the now usual white milled poppyseed roll. Therkon leant on the Riverside rail—troublecrew flatly forbade him the bank-side—while closer midships, I sat on an incongruous formal chair.

  When he did not go on, Two extrapolated. “You prevented him?”

  “Ouch,” said Therkon, and shifted his shoulders. “No, not, ah, prevented . . .”

  “A bargain, then?”

  “The Nine-limbed Adversary . . . no.” I could complete the formula, from overhearing sailors: The Adversary fly away with whatever vexed the speaker. In this case, our wits.

  “Well.” He gave me that slightly too-charming smile. “There was a, a bargain of sorts, yes.” As he looked in my face something made him suddenly put his chin up. The smile disappeared.

  “I had to tell him where I was going, and—who—I hoped to bring downRiver. And, yes, pledge that I would at least ask you to see him. When we came back.”

  He knew what he had done. He did not need to glance aside at Azo or Verrith. But he did hold my eyes, and there might have been shame, or a shame-faced plea for forgiveness, but what I read there was a different plea. For understanding. For acceptance of a ruler’s necessities, drawn from how much he had already shown me, honestly, openly, of his life.

  “And does that pledge cover us,” I said at last, “past Deyiko?”

  He relaxed suddenly on the rail with a smile that made me clutch Tanekhet’s warning like a tree-trunk in a flood.

  “My lady. Yes. Nathyx is not the sort to dabble in treachery, but the agreement does cover us across the border. Both into, and then out of, Deyiko.”

  Where Nathyx kept his word, so we passed from the relative safety of Verrain to the questionable Shirran borderlands: and dropped the transport, along with a hundred troops.

  “A balance,” Therkon explained wryly. “Less defense, but considerably more speed. And better manoeuvring, if trouble came.”

  Two watched them go with a different regret. Only then did I realize how sequestered I had been, locked in a double ring of troublecrew. I had talked to Therkon. I knew the name of his cook, Tuor, his Trouble-head, Deoren, his phalanx-troop commander, Euchan, but except for Tuor I had hardly exchanged a word with them. As for the actual troops . . .

  “Two wanted to learn some soldiers,” I said regretfully, as the Dhasdein-side quays slid behind. “Now all those are gone. And we never seem to get near these, anyway.” At which Therkon spluttered aloud.

  “Euchan’s threatened them,” he said, becoming extremely straight-faced, “with castration and decimation if one gets in spearlength. Let alone has you trip over his feet.”

  “Oh.” Then the too familiar awareness of difference, avoidance, hidden repulsion changed. “You mean that’s why they all herd up on the foredeck whenever I go down there? Why didn’t you tell me? The poor things are crowded enough as it is!”

  From his expression, the comfort of phalanx rankers was their leade
rs’ last concern. But he took instant advantage. “Then, my lady Chaeris, will you do them as well as me a favor? Will you stay off the foredeck, until we reach Riversrun?”

  * * * *

  Two had my three parents’ memories of the River through the old territories of Dhasdein: so it was easier than I had thought, to watch from astern as the land grew both emptier and more fertile, to match recalled names with the little Riverside towns as the low rolling hills swelled into fawn and muted spring green under drifting clouds of sheep, masked by the River fringe of mighty red-barked helliens. Quetzistan to the left, Shirran to the right, looked little different.

  Therkon did not have to tell me the Quetzistani sheep-herders were almost nomad and scorned farming, while hidden up the largely empty roads, along the many small tributaries, lay the vineyards that provided Shirran’s chief income. Nor did he have to explain why the troops now stood watch in a triple rota, one group armed on deck, one below, one relieving at the oars. Or why we never hove to except at some Quetzistani quay, or what the tension was that wrapped both galleys in a silent thundercloud.

  But Shirran let us pass. In twelve back-breaking runs we reached Narmin, the Mel’ethi border-post.

  Without surprise I found Therkon had made agreements here as well: the galleys paid a toll, and there was a customs officer, but it was all done on the Quetzistani bank. Next morning we embarked on the shortest leg of the trip, between Shirran and Riversrun.

  Mel’eth stretches far into the west, down to the ocean beyond Riversrun’s border, but its River frontage is relatively narrow. We had one momentary scare, when a cedar raft coming downRiver all the way from Cataract mistook its heading and nearly fouled the second galley’s anchor in the dusk, but otherwise, Mel’eth was quiet. Five days saw us to Serythir, once the Riversrun boundary, now the first true border-fort of Dhasdein.

  We arrived late on a muggy mid-spring afternoon, with a release of tension visible as the sun-play on great silvery heaps of drifting cloud. As the galleys worked in to anchor by the solid stone quay, carefully beyond bowshot from the watch-bastions, the troops on shift were actually joking while they rowed.